The Discontinuity Guide
The Past Doctor Adventures

The Shadow in the Glass

April 2001

(Features the Sixth Doctor at some point between Trial of a Time Lord and Business Unusual)

Author: Stephen Cole and Justin Richards

Editor: Justin Richards

Roots:The Last Days of Hitler by Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Death of Hitler by Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and The X-Files. The Doctor's nerve-pinch is very Mr Spock. Irina Kobulov is compared to Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love). There are references to Anne Diamond's TV Week, Richard and Judy, Heironymous Bosch, Canaletto, The Mail On Sunday, Joe Bugner, Ronald McDonald, and Boy's Own.

Continuity: The Brigadier is alone during this story, Doris spending a week away. He has a long interest in military history. He still has the Doctor's Space-Time telegraphy set from Terror of the Zygons, which he operates by speaking to it [perhaps it is connected to the TARDIS telepathic circuits?]. His special UNIT pass was renewed following Battlefield. He speaks a smattering of German. He has contacts in Russia from the old days and has previously been on joint [UNIT-related] missions with the Russians (c.f. The Devil Goblins from Neptune). The Russian equivalent of UNIT is called the Russian Special Operations Forces.

When the Brigadier greets the Doctor by saying that it has been a long time since he's seen him, the Doctor replies that he's sure it will be. However, the Brigadier is familiar with the Sixth Doctor, so this story must be set after The Spectre of Lanyon Moor for him. Since the Doctor has yet to meet Mel, it must also be set prior to Business Unusual, so for the Doctor this story must take place before he meets Evelyn (or after they part company), since he is traveling alone. As in Endgame, the Doctor can render humans unconscious with a shoulder pinch. He has read (and presumably owns) The Eye-Spy Book of Alien Spaceships, which list the Vvormak. He has gained an almost mythical reputation amongst UNIT soldiers. He wears a sombre dark suit to visit Churchill. He knows how to parachute. Whilst in wartime Germany he creates the alias of Major Johann Schmidt for himself, and takes blood samples from both Hitler and Eva Braun. The TARDIS contains a Gladstone bag containing two glass syringes.

Sergeant Osgood (The Dæmons) is now in his fifties and works as a scientific advisor to UNIT.

The Vvormak are short, gargoyle-like aliens who can create psychic extensions of themselves to take care of them whilst they are in hibernation during space travel. These familiars can psychokinetically attack people and manipulate objects. They can survive the death of their parent Vvormak and adopt a new host, in this case Henderson. Their technology is crystalline and their ships can absorb energy, up to and including that of a nuclear explosion. Their hibernation tanks contain emergency units that can extend their life force should they fail to wake up on time, and which can increase the longevity of a human.

Hitler died in the Bunker in 1945, but Eva Braun did not; she was smuggled out of Berlin and Martin Bormann killed the luckless Claire Aldwych and burnt her body so that it could be used as a double. The pregnant Braun gave birth to a son, named Adolf Hitler after his father. He was raised in the Nazis' hidden Antarctic base and brought up to believe not only in his father's ideals but also in the occult. The Doctor is forced to take him back in time to meet his father, where Bormann kills him and he becomes the double of Hitler found murdered in the Reichschancellery water tower.

Links: Claire Aldwych wrote a secret history of Nunton (The Hand of Fear). Palmer refers to the events of The Time Monster and the Brigadier recalls the Master using Bok (The Dæmons). Claire has heard of Sarah-Jane. Winston Churchill remembers the Doctor from Players.

Location: Turelhampton, England, May 17th 1944, 18th August 1944, and April 2001; Kilkhampton, Cornwall, April 2001; England, October 1955; Antarctica, 1945, 1955 and April 2001; Berlin, 1942 and 1945.

Unrecorded Adventures: The Doctor helped Yablokov, counselor to the Russian President, investigate the whereabouts of all known man-portable nuclear devices during the 1970s. They found that eighty-four were unaccounted for. He also flew in a Halifax mark IIV in March 1945. He learnt Russian so as to read the original versions of Chekov.

The Bottom Line: Despite being hastily written by two authors as a replacement for the delayed Instruments of Darkness, The Shadow in the Glass stands up well as a tight thriller in its own right. The rapport between the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier makes for a refreshing (and rarely used) combination, and the ill-fated Claire Aldwych serves her purpose as a stand-in companion right up until her demise in the shocking climax.